DUE to the unavoidable absence of our scheduled speaker who had been admitted to hospital, Grenville Burrows stepped into the breach with great aplomb.

Grenville began by showing us his moving video of a fire that had ravaged a large area of Southern France in 1991 which has so influenced his 9 year old son that he subsequently became, and still is, a fire-fighter.

However, the nub of Grenville’s presentation was the Bastide towns of South France, which are fortified new towns built in medieval Languedoc, Gascony and Aquitaine during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

He described the main feature of all Bastides with a central square used for markets and political and social gatherings. Built as a single unit, by a single founder, the majority of Bastides were developed with a grid layout of intersecting streets.

Grenville explained how these towns had been developed and the reasoning for them, including pressures from the church, the demise of the feudal system and the various social changes that were taking place at that time.

The decline of the Bastides was accelerated by famine, the Black Death and of course the Hundred Years war. Nevertheless, many of the original Bastide towns are still very proud of their heritage, including Monflanquin, Villeneuve sur Lot and of course Carcassonne.

Grenville closed with the assertion that the development of the Bastide towns was an important step in the construction of the modern world. He then responded to our many searching questions. Most of us had known very little about these towns but by the end of his presentation we were all so much better informed.

Bill Underwood thanked Grenville for a most riveting talk and congratulated him on his painstaking research, eloquence and erudition.

On Thursday 29 September we shall hear about the Khyber Pass followed on 6 October with the Battle of the Altantic.

CHRIS DONOUGH